And Hannah,--what shall we say of her passionate longing and prayer for a child? Was this sinful, like the longing of the Israelites for gross and stimulating food? or was it foolish, and wanting in judgment, like good King Hezekiah’s prayer for a longer life? There are traces in the story of its having been neither the one nor the other. In the first place, the granting of her request turned out thoroughly well; it turned out not only for her own happiness and honour, but for the good of the Church and people of God, which does not look as if God was displeased with it. Then look at the mind of the woman herself--what a holy and good woman she seems to have been. Then observe, too, how little of herself there is in her petition, as it is expressed in her vow. She vows that she will give the child Unto the Lord “all the days of his life.” Her child, as being a Levite, would, in the ordinary course of things, be bound to the service of the tabernacle from the age of twenty to the age of fifty; but Hannah vows that she will give him up to the service of the Lord from his earliest childhood. And so she did. It was clear that she had great, disinterested, patriotic views for the child, altogether distinct from any consideration of her own comfort in him; and probably in making her vow she must have been guided by some intimation from the Holy Spirit that a great honour was in store for her, but that she must seek it in the appointed way in which all blessings are to be had--in prayer and sacrifice of the mere natural inclinations. (Dean Goulburn.)
